Premier League Thread

Pay it no mind, he really is a nobody.

 

It's best not to play an extra CB when only one CB is of fair quality (in theory) and they're being played LB/LWB!

 

Sadly he's also the highest earning sports journalist in the UK, with his rate of pay at around £420k per annum.

He has a chip on his shoulder about journalism degrees, too. He said he'd only take English graduates from Oxbridge.

 

While on the Mail agenda: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...tml?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

Ignores what he says and posts a negative article anyway!

 

If he really did some research, instead of writing an article to fit his agenda, he'd realise that a thin squad last season got hit by a couple of injuries to key players just when we needed everyone at full fitness. It took a wee while to recover. Cardiff got the brunt of that when we won 3-0 at their place [I wanted to say Ninian Park]. Then we got reasonably back on track until Jay's injury, but it was never quite the same.

This season the squad is stronger, even if the first 11 are better/worse/similar. I think we ultimately have more firepower than last season and although they've started well, it still needs to come together. Watch out when it does.

 

It's a bit of a presumptuous, nothing article, but were those circumstances to unfold then yes, he'd probably end up being right. However there's absolutely no evidence that what happened over the summer was anything but a complete one off. I can't conceive of that ever happening again.

 

Not that bad really, more of a hypothetical and warning to not repeat the last transfer window.

Fact is when it comes to clubs that have had substantial changes over the summer our current success is the exception rather than the rule so we should be glad that the pieces have fit and everything integrated so smoothly because it could quite easily have gone the other way.

I understand the fans desire to defend a club from negativity...we would defend hyper-aggresive hornets if they nested exclusively in St Mary's...but with this piece I actually hope someone like Ralph or Les reads it and maybe, just maybe it crosses their mind when their reviewing offers for our players in future windows.

 

Wasn't Martin Samuel the journo that Rupert Lowe took to taske and won a court case against?
If so that explains his continued vitriol

 

History Repeating....I would be surprised in MP lasts until XMas as Levy won't see them.kicking around low to mid table with the fans getting very irate and frustrated by the teams single tactic
As I said to a Spurs supporting colleague, I would have surprised to see him succeed at WHL as I couldn't see their "superstars" working hard with the high press tactics like our lesser mortals were prepared to do.
I hadn't bargained for the Spurs fans not interested in ball possession and control of the game. Maybe they should go for Big Sam A next time!

 

Well I'll link it: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...dn-t-fooled-high-life-selling-big-danger.html

I'm almost, but not quite, prepared to sign up to that bloody rag to give Samuels a piece of my mind. He seems to be on a one-man mission to undermine everything that happens at Southampton. He also bends any fact around until it fits his argument. This so-called firesale that he goes on about, as if Saints said roll-up roll-up to all the eager bidders, when we know full well that the club wouldn't have sold any key player if they had had the choice. So the firesale was nothing of the kind. The best players wanted to go and we certainly didn't push them out the door. If we had, do you think we would have held out for the ridiculous sums we obtained for them..? But Samuels overlooks these things because he knows the neutral fan has no real idea of the truth [and neither does he], so he gets them to accept what he decides to feed them. He's not a journalist. He's an inventor and **** stirrer. If I was at Saints I'd do a Rupert Lowe on him and threaten him with court action again.

 

I don't see anything too wrong with that article other than the curious conclusion that our good start is somehow bad for us in the long run.

Who knows what the board are thinking? Maybe they might read that article and not sell someone they thought might bring in a healthy profit.

Mostly, the article is reasonably complimentary about us.

In general, I don't mind articles that suggest we are not as good as our position suggests. Once the rest of the footballing world wake up to the fact that we are actually pretty good, it will make winning that little bit harder.

 

I have no problem with most of that article...a fair assessment of our season. Can't remember if Samuel's wrote it, but a lot of journalists wrote that the team left because of Poch's move to Spurs...so the issue of what would have happened if Poch had stayed but the team sold is moot. I do disagree about his idea that MP brought the team through...in general, he just put the frosting on the gingerbread. He made our players look like world beaters which attracted large bids. He may have brought Chambers in, but he had no input on his development and he dropped him.

He is right that most teams would struggle after selling so many players in one summer, but we brought in a top manager and gave him a lot of money to spend...hardly typical. And yes, we have been lucky with the games that we start with, but that could have worked against us if we started like Liverpool and ManU (two other teams in flux) and lost games whilst we bedded in.

He is right that we can't do this again, but I doubt we will. We will return to being a normal team who sells one or two...just hope one isn't Morgan.

 

The premise of the article was that the board would get so dizzy at the prospect of raking in huge sums of cash that they will repeat the exercise next summer. The theory is flawed because the majority of the money has been spent on replacing and strengthening the squad, with about £30 million left to boost wages, finish the work at Staplewood, and possibly make a purchase or two in January. There isn't really anything factually incorrect in the piece, but leaving out key bits of data has skewed his conclusions.

Unless of course, perish the thought, he started with the conclusions and chose the data to support them, but what self-respecting journalist would do that?

 

I think he was warning against thinking you could do this twice, but he forgets the pain everyone went through. I cannot imagine Les and Ralf want to go through that again. Imagine the work involved in identifying players and trying to sign them, missing out and then moving to the next target...not for one or two players, but eight. And we had to settle for 2 loans. There is no sign that money has been removed by the owner, so the pressure won't come from there. They certainly won't want to risk losing Koeman by selling the team from under him. I think we have proved Samuel's wrong and he is unwilling to let it go.

 

Aaaanyway. What an absolutely perfect weekend's sport. I'm guessing this is the highest Saints have been in the top flight since 1984, so even though it's only September, I am going to seize every possible opportunity that comes my way to have a look at the table in every possible format.

Meanwhile, taking pleasure in the misfortune of others is not the most endearing human trait; indefensible really. But Spurs and Liverpool both losing surely has to be the work of a vengeful SFC supporting deity. And to cap it all, yesterday afternoon I walked into a pub in Farnborough just in time to witness that Vardy fella's goal against Man Utd, bringing the whole pub to it's feet. You can go pretty much anywhere in the world and find a bar or cafe full of people cheering on Man Utd, but almost anywhere in this country, a goal against them causes joy unconfined; that reaction in a pub in Farnborough filled me with a warm glow of affection for my fellow countrymen and women.

 

Here here

 

Nah Samuels has always disliked us, it's just his way of having another dig.

 

Lol. It had to be be Neil Ashton, didn't it?

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... and to add to this, I will be squeezing every fluid ounze of milk out of these extremely good looking udders I see before me, with the fans and supporters of those teams who took such delight in giving me **** this summer. Now I am a person who deserved all that ****, because I dish it out, so for the next how ever long it lasts, I am milking these babies!

 

The table tells many truths, & a few lies, but one thing it does suggest is that no one is rolling over. From bottom to top there is a even spread on defeats that strikes me as unusual for this stage. Those multiple draws down there make for a very changeable few weekends. So as beautiful as the top, precarious is the bottom, really hope we can start well against Qpr & keep the balance.